In early 2010 the manufacturing giant Foxconn started to make headlines as an apparent string of worker suicides unfolded. During that time, the Guangdong newspaper Southern Weekly decided to find out what conditions were really like by sending a journalist in undercover as a normal worker. After several older reporters were denied for being too old, 20-year-old intern Liu Zhiyi was finally hired. For 28 days he worked at Foxconn’s largest factory in Shenzhen and lived in a company dormitory where he tried to understand the workers’ lives and what was behind the suicides.

Recently Foxconn has been back in the news over alleged riots and the company’s admission that it had employed underage workers. In today’s podcast, Liu Zhiyi recounts his time at Foxconn and puts the major stories surrounding the company into context. 

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